“Are you kidding? Never short short. Just a trim, but maybe with layers. Men like women with long hair. Look around the room.”
Hailey took a look. Stark decor, flickering white candles centered on small tables for two, beautiful waitstaff clad in black. Places like this were a dime a dozen in this neighborhood.
“What am I looking at?” she asked Dana.
“You’re looking at all the cozy couples. And how the women all have long hair.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“We’re just as hot as any of these women, Hailey. How come they’re all with dates and we aren’t? Should I cut my hair into a new style?”
“Definitely. You’d look even more gorgeous with layers. It would frame your face.”
“So you don’t like it the way I wear it now, then?”
“No! I didn’t say that! You look great and you know it… You know, though, I really do have to go.”
Hailey looked around for their waiter, a bored-looking theatrical type. He had already told them he wanted to act on Broadway, as if they knew of a job opening and would whip out their cells and hook him up right there on the spot. He just spilled it out during the drink order.
“Maybe I’ll go out to a club by myself. I can’t stand the thought of going home alone again to that depressing little apartment,” Dana said glumly.
“Oh, come on. It’s not depressing. It’s cozy.”
“It’s depressing. Believe me. I need to get a life, or I’m going to grow old all by myself and get a bunch of cats and eat their food and then one day the super will get a complaint that a funny smell is coming from seven-B, and you know what the smell is going to be, Hailey?”
Hailey knew what was coming, but she asked anyway. “What?”
“Me. Dead. For days. Weeks.”
Hailey burst out laughing for the first time that day.
“Seriously! Stop laughing! The way things are going now, I’ll wind up one of those lonely, miserable old recluses you hear about on the news, where no one even misses them. Just some rotting corpse.”
Rotting corpse. Hailey’s laughter died away and she looked at Dana over the flickering candle.
Even after all this time, Hailey envisioned hundreds of crime scene photos back in Atlanta, victims’ faces frozen in horror in their last shocking moments on earth. She’d never forget…just an occupational hazard. You never get over it…it’s always in your blood, there just beneath your skin. But at least Hailey put the bad guys away or sent them to The Row. They’d never get out.
17
St. Simons Island, Georgia
WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG, ALL EIGHT OF VIRGINIA GUNN’S wiener dogs ran toward the front door, barking viciously at the thought of a possible intruder.
“Shut up!” she yelled, wading through them, stooping to pet and pat as she went.
They ignored her and kept barking their heads off.
“Sidney!” she shouted. “Sidney, go! Sit! Everyone, sit!” She pointed at eight individual wiener-dog cushions that shared prime locations around the living room, on sofas and easy chairs near a huge fireplace.
The pack mentality of the tiny but hostile group egged them on, but after several minutes of Gunn shouting them down, Sidney, their leader, offered up a few more barks, then trotted toward his cushion. The rest followed.
Virginia opened the door. Renee and Dottie stood on the doorstep, accompanied by a woman with braids, wearing a long, flowered dress, and an overweight guy with a beard.
They all looked a little rattled by the audibly hostile welcome, but nobody was backing away. Virginia, who rejected all those who rejected her dogs, was relieved. She needed these people.
“They’re harmless,” Virginia assured them, waving a dismissive hand at the dogs. “I’m so glad you could all come.”
“These are our friends Ken and Suz,” Dottie said, and Virginia shook the newcomers’ hands and thanked them for coming.
Then Renee, who had exchanged her hiking shorts for jeans, held out a plate of…something…
“What are these?” Virginia asked politely, peering at a dozen or so shapeless blobs on a ceramic plate.
“Mock deviled eggs,” Renee said. “Dottie made them herself!”
“I hope you like them. They’re my specialty.” Dottie smiled proudly.
“Oh, my…thanks! Come on in and have a seat.”
The future guerrillas trooped over the threshold. Obviously afraid to plop themselves down next to the eight angry bits of fur, they stood, imperceptibly edging toward the kitchen and away from the wieners.
“Seriously,” Virginia said, setting the mock-deviled-egg thingies on the counter beside the chips and dip, “don’t mind the dogs, they never bite.”
Virginia tossed ingredients into the blender as Suz looked cautiously around the den.
“Have you been here long?”
“You mean on St. Simons? All my life,” Virginia said, just before turning the blender on high speed, a Salem Light pressed between her lips.
Not only that, but she hadn’t even left the Island once in over twelve years.
It just wasn’t worth it.
She was sure that the moment she turned her back, the Commission would call a closed-door “emergency” meeting and suddenly a mini-mart would wind up perched on the dunes off her own back deck.
Virginia turned off the blender and wielded the foamy green slush over a waiting tray of glasses. “Allrighty…who wants one?”
“What are they?” Dottie-of the mock deviled eggs-asked warily.
“My specialty. I call them hairy margaritas.” She poured five without waiting for orders, and handed them around.
“Let’s sit, shall we?”
Only when Virginia rolled over the liquor cart and the dogs drifted off to sleep did the future guerrillas relax a tiny bit and move in the direction of the sofas.
“So, Ken”-she targeted him first, sensing that he, like Sidney, was the leader of the pack-“what do you do?”
“I’m in computers.”
“Really? Software, programming?”
“Radio Shack.”
“Ah.” She nodded, sipped, and listened politely as Ken demonstrated a deep knowledge of all things tech-related.
Then she learned Dottie was a biology teacher, Renee a Wal-Mart cashier, and Suz a waitress at the Shrimp Boat. All were relative newcomers to the Island. Perfect.
The conversation flowed and a general good mood slowly seeped over the future eco-guerrillas, punctured by an occasional sharp bark emitted by a wiener obviously embroiled in a doggie nightmare.
“And what do you do, Virginia?” Ken asked.
Deflecting the question about the present, she instead addressed the past. “Well, I used to be the Chief County Commissioner.”
“Really?”
She filled them in on the goofy-golf debacle, then launched into her crowning glory.
“It happened before the last vote on constructing a major bridge connecting the Island to the mainland,” Virginia informed the rapt audience, as they munched chips and dips and mock deviled eggs, and sipped the all-important drinks.
“What happened?”
Virginia smiled, reeling them in. “Well, the afternoon of the bridge vote, I called Chairman McKissick’s office and talked to his assistant, Sean.”
Sean was a nineteen-year-old, a five-foot-nine-inch looker, a Glynn County High School grad who’d done a year at Glynn Junior College. She would soon be one in a long line of secretaries who had walked off the job after one too many booty gooses from Chairman McKissick.
Virginia still remembered when Sean answered the phone, “Chairman McKissick’s office, here to serve the people of the Golden Isles. The Chairman’s office is always open to his constituents. May we help you?”
“Does he make you go through that spiel every single time you answer the phone?” she had asked Sean. “I bet he made that up, didn’t he?”
No answer from Sean. She didn’t understand the question.